As the days passed by, with the twilight deepening into short nights, Art and Farnum both grew increasingly anxious to be on their way for the outside. They knew their North, and they realized that the time remaining to them before Winter set in was narrowing down to a perilously small edge.
“We’ll have a mighty hard job of it, Mr. Hampton,” Farnum pleaded. “What with wounded on our hands, and prisoners to guard, it looks almost hopeless as it is for us to get out. But, anyway, we can’t afford to waste time. Can’t Thorwaldsson be moved? He’ll be all right in a canoe.”
“As long as the traveling is easy, yes,” said Mr. Hampton. “He will be all right. But how about at the portages? He’s lost lot of blood already. He can’t afford to lose any more. However, I expect that with care we can prevent his wounds from reopening. We’ll start tomorrow.”
Accordingly, on the day appointed, camp was broken, and the party got under way. Frank’s shoulder was healed sufficiently to permit him once more to wield a paddle, although still a trifle stiff, and he took his place in the canoe with Bob and Jack. They had another passenger this time in Farrell, whose right arm had been broken by a shot in the sanguinary fight on the river beach. Thorwaldsson was taken in the canoe occupied by Mr. Hampton and Farnum, Art going in one of the other craft with members of Thorwaldsson’s party. Several of the latter had been creased by rifle bullets and one shot through a leg, but all could wield paddles.
And so the long trip out of the wilderness began, with the half-breeds in three canoes, deprived of arms and closely watched by their captors in the four canoes bringing up the rear. With reasonable care, it was felt, the prisoners could be controlled until they should near civilization. Without weapons they would be in a hopeless plight in the wilderness, unable to defend themselves against wild animals, unable to provide food for themselves. Therefore, no attempt on the part of their captives to escape was looked for by the others, until they should near the outlying settlements of the inhabited country.
“When that time comes,” Mr. Hampton had warned the boys, “we must be on the lookout, for the half-breeds, unless closely watched, will try to get back their weapons and make a break for it. And I am determined to take them into civilization as witnesses to prove my statement of the murderous conspiracy against us on the part of an eminent gentleman in faraway New York.”
Mr. Hampton spoke bitterly, for from all that had occurred and from the accounts, first of Long Tom and of the dying Lupo, and again of Farrell and the surviving members of Thorwaldsson’s party, he had pieced together the story of the conspiracy against them.
To the boys he confided this tale, the main theme of which was that when Farrell had told his story to Mr. Otto Anderson concerning the discovery of the oil-bearing region in the Arctic, Mr. Anderson’s confidential secretary had gone to a New York financier and sold him the information. He had not been able to tell definitely, however, the location of the oil region, for the very good reason, as before related, that Farrell was not certain of it himself, his vicissitudes in getting out of the country having unsettled his mind. Therefore, this financier had sent his agents westward with word that Thorwaldsson be tracked.
“Perhaps this financier, Old Grimm, ordered the mere tracking of Thorwaldsson,” said Mr. Hampton. “But I doubt it. The attacks on Thorwaldsson’s expedition, the disappearance of his ship and crew, all look like parts of a deep-laid plan to attain Grimm’s ends at whatever cost in human life. And, on top of it all, the attack on us by Lupo, who was paid a handsome sum down in Dawson by Anderson’s former secretary, acting as agent for Grimm, show the latter aimed to put us all out of the way.”
“And all for money,” said Jack. “It’s hard to believe.”